Feeling at Home in Your Home after Divorce

Coming Home to Self

Home.

Feeling at home again in your home is an important goal after divorce; I would go so far as to say it is one of the priorities.

Our residence may or may not change with divorce but our sense of home likely will change in accordance with the particular circumstances of divorce.  Some of us will stay in our home and our ex will move out. Some of us will have to sell our home or terminate a lease on our apartment. We might need to downsize. We might need a room mate to help cover costs. 

Coming to terms with where you're at right now in terms of where you call home and making wherever you are a place that is safe and sacred for you, even if it's a transitional space, so that you can begin to feel grounded again.

Spring cleaning is not just for spring it is for all times of rebirth and renewal!

In this post I am speaking specifically to the situation where your ex has moved out and you are living in the residence wh...

Do you have a fear about anything that might occur today?

Are you significantly worried about future events?

What makes you feel fully alive, competent, and creative? 

Is it any less worthwhile to ask the third question? 

Researchers who study positive psychology believe understanding what makes life worth living is of equal importance to studies of disorders and mental illness. In fact, they believe that studying the conditions and processes that contribute to our thriving will also give us further insight into disorders and mental illness.  We know much more about how negative experiences lead to illness than how positive emotions promote health.  

Critics of the study of positive psychology suggest that positive psychology encourages us to see the world unrealistically, through rose colored glasses.  But positive psychology isn’t about denying the negative aspects of life nor does it imply that the study of disorders and illnesses is negative.  

I see positive p...

Where do you find organization and productivity?

At The Intersection of opportunity, desire, and action.

You can't take your eyes off of your daily jam and the clock has melted away.

Are You Productive…Or Just Busy?

You've observed someone who seems to be so darn busy all of the time but doesn’t really get anything done. Maybe you have found yourself rocking in this very same boat. We all do, occasionally. But if it is too frequently, your boat will capsize and your dreams will float ahead upstream and out of reach.  

Do you have goals? 

Of course you do. But can you state them quickly and concisely because they remain top of mind?

Productive People have clear goals upon which they focus all of their efforts on achieving those goals.  Of course there are always going to be distractions. For productive people, distractions don’t take priority over the big picture, the achievement of important goals.

Tell me, do you focus or multi-task? 

Multi-taskers are very busy, alwa...

Friends! It's time for a series. Time to dive into a topic in depth and share, discuss, learn, create and more about it.  You know my zone ....psychology, relationships, divorce recovery, self-love, emotional healing, transformation.  Throw your questions and topic ideas my way. I want to use this space intentionally and meaningfully. I seek to connect with you, my amazing reader. 

What's been on your mind?

What do you remember of the dream that woke you with a start?

What's the argument you keep having with yourself?

What is the beauty you want to know more of?

What are the connections you seek? 

I am over the moon at the prospect of learning where you want to go next!

Jodi

The Hardest Question For My Therapy Clients to Answer

Sometimes it feels impossible to answer the question: "If I could live my life anyway I wanted, anywhere I wanted, with whomever I wanted, and do what I wanted what will my life look like?"

Visualizing your next leap into possibility is being willing to open at least one eye toward that which is both tantalizing and scary.  

One of the hardest questions for my clients to answer is  "What do you want?"

"What do you want?"

Seems like an easy peasy question. I guess if you are at In and Out trying to decide what to have for lunch from their limited menu of single, double, double double, it might be easy peasy. Even then, there are all the secret menu items and the FOMO that comes from not ordering the Flying Dutchman with the Animal Style french fries and whether it's really worthwhile to watch calories and not order the neopolitan shake.

In my psychology office when I ask, "What do you want?" the response I receive is often a stum...

How do I stay strong for my kids during and after divorce?

As a psychologist who specializes in helping parents through divorce, I know deep down in my soul the extent to which watching your children experience divorce is painful and one of the most challenging areas of getting through divorce.

The thing about resilience in children is that divorce alone doesn't mean that children are going to have a difficult future or that they're not going to be emotionally unhealthy. It doesn't mean that at all. What is harmful to children is conflict between parents and feelings of stress and instability.  Those are areas we can draw our attention to and make a difference in order to support our children. The things that mean the most for our children's well-being are actually within our control. That is a good thing.

Taking steps to help our children also helps us to move forward.

Gabriella, a newly divorced mom of 4 said,  "I'll survive this, but what have I done to their life?"  We can cont...

Monday morning. I have left the first day of the week free so I can get some desperately needed work done.

Three articles to write, research on Prosopagnosia (a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces) to do in order to understand how a client who has the disorder, as well as trauma from an abusive marriage to a pathological narcissist, may cope differently than those who do not have prosopagnosia, and over a dozen client plans for the coming week on my to do list. Yet, where is my mind?

Quick peek at a People article on how happy and smiley Jennifer Lopez looks hanging out with Ben Affleck, now that they may be reuniting 20 years after their heart wrenching break-up. She was Jenny on the block back then and now at 50 looks just as amazing. Quick google of her anti-aging regimen.  Maybe some fruit will get my head in the right place. Watered the plants on the front porch.  Feeling just a bit weary, I think I will lay down for a minute....You get the p...

How do we release relationships that aren't serving us any longer?

We may never have consciously chosen to divorce or seperate.

We may never have believed our loss would lead to something positive.

Now that the loss occurred, our willingness to acknowledge any growth or resilience we've developed as a consequence of the break up is an important step in healing and forward life movement.

The Key to Experiencing Loss as an Opportunity is to give ourselves permission to experience the loss and heart ache as an opportunity.

It takes courage to experience loss and heart ache as an opportunity. Your brain will scream "NO! DON'T DO IT!" 

Our brain says seeing the positive in this loss is a dangerous move because our brain serves us by trying to protect us.  Yet holding on to the loss is not going to protect us from future loss.  It is actually offering the opposite of protecting us from future loss. It is making us experience the loss again and again in the present, where it otherwise w...

 By Placing the Past in the Past We Assert that Divorce is Not Failure

We are also working on the premise that even though it's an extremely untapped or repressed capacity in most women, we were created subtly and energetically with unparalleled capacities for transmutation of what may be out of balance or toxic to us. This means that regardless of what we face in life, if we are empowered enough to really understand our inherent energetic capacities as women, we can ALWAYS transform a toxic experience into energy or resource that sustains and strengthens us. And I mean no matter how awful or toxic. Our capacities are unlimited.

Jumana Sophia

Placing the past in the past does not mean we should try to forget about our experiences. That kind of dissociation serves only to deny what we know to be true and causes us to lose trust in ourselves. 

When I refer to placing the past in the past, I am suggesting that we think of divorce as one part of life, but not our entire lives. It is...

Powered By Intention A Woman In Motion Stays in Motion

I believe in the power of our intentions.

The way we spend our days is the way we spend our lives.

If we wait until the end of our divorce or until everything finally settles down to be intentional, to build our life, to experience the life that we want to provide for our children, we are spending years of our life in despair. We're not going to get these years back on the other end of our days!

I'm a psychologist and former divorce lawyer.  As a divorce lawyer, I discovered that it is challenging for anybody to win in a divorce. I wasn't able to help women in a way that was sustainable. Even if you win your divorce case and your settlement is exactly what you wanted, that's not necessarily going to help you confidently move into your future. What we need for that are our inner resources.

My specialty is helping women through divorce. I am passionate about helping them to seize the opportunity that divorce provides. I myself h...